I miss school a whole lot and I'm finding that looking at pictures of my old crew makes my heart ache. L said something similar too. I'm trying to keep my distance from that until the dawning of the newly graduated freedom is gone and sanity and normality return. Thinking of how much fun I had makes my chest tingle with sadness, with the depression of something too good to be true, too good to last. Thinking about the night I got so drunk on three beers and ran off with --- and toasted to Saint Anselm with a bottle of champagne on top of the rugby tower makes me hope that my senior year will be filled with such sexy, dangerous, collegiate shenanigans like that. There is a sharp clawing sensation under my ribs like something wants to break out but I know that it can't get free just yet. I'm not ready to come to terms with what was fun and what was had and what is over.

My dealing with the breakup is a slow push and pull and sometimes, at night, when it's quiet and I catch myself yearning for a hand to hold, I discover the lump in my throat that has propped itself in my airway since the discovery of the lies, since the drug addiction and since the questioning. I get mad and tired and wish that I could hate - for all the mindgames he played and I played but the guilt sets in and I remember that I can't hate him; he wasn't a mistake. He wasn't someone I never should have been with. The love I fell into was cloudy and misty and light with some other worldly semblance of heaven. The photos say it all and the sex spoke for itself. I'm having trouble coming to terms with how it all collapsed and how I still blame myself for some of it and how I still feel as though I have love to give even though that mist has been burned away by the blinding light of disillusionment and truth.

I hear that I will always love him and that those feelings will never go away. I was eighteen and fresh starting college and we found each other at the right moment. He gave me a power and a blessing I never knew existed and I fought for us as hard as I could. We spent hours talking about things people never talked about and we fell harder than anyone else ever could. I lost myself in him and he christened my body like he was the only man in the world meant to do so. We drank the best booze and smoked the best magic you could find and we had the best sex anyone could imagine. We swam inside each other and, like how the greatness of the year had to end, the good times died and we both drowned. Sometimes I wish I could regret it all, take it all back so I don't have to dwell on the loss. But I know that's impossible and like - said over his one beer and my two, "You had a good time. That's all you should think about."

It's clear to me that I may be afraid to experience something like that again: the way my heart was set on fire by an obliterating passionate love and how we had to end with a 911 call and the denial of things no one ever saw. I miss the danger and intrigue of having someone so reckless and young kiss me like he did but I know having stayed tied down to something that wasn't moving forward with me would have been criminal. It was a sacrifice for myself that most musicians dream of experiencing so they could write a multiplatinum album about it. However, I'm stuck at the apex of the whirlwind and the suction is too strong to share. Leaning in and looking down is a tiny, seductive temptation and it's taking all my strength to stay upright, just, -.

And sometimes rationalizing the inappropriate amounts of bottles drained is okay and the large glasses of wine is okay and the irresponsible nights of self-proclaimed sluttery is okay because I'm young and 21 and heartbroken and free for the first time in years. I'm not looking for anyone else, I'm not looking for someone to "fix" me and no, I could never love him the way he wants me to even though I am using him for something else. My statements are pieces of ragged truths that sometimes aren't taken too seriously but my little heart can't be broken again if the hubris of men wills them to ignore my honesty. I'm not on the market and I'm not a damsel looking for my John Wayne hunk-of-a-man to save me. I am the cat and the mouse and I'm looking for a rumble.